Advent: season of hope and waiting

Nov 30 AD 2008: First Sunday in Advent

Advent is a season of waiting for Christ's return. The Israelites in our readings today were longing for God's presence to restore them; they wanted God to come down so they could see Him face to face and be saved. We in turn wait for Jesus to come again so that we can experience the full realization of the hope we have as Christians. I value the reminder that Advent is to keep awake – I often forget to really long for Jesus to return: my mind is frequently bound by the mundane realities of this world or plans and anxieties that are temporal.

I've started reading a fascinating book by a guy called Adrian Nocent called “The Liturgical Year” (there are 150 pages on the Advent season, though – I will only be able to dabble! =p). He asks a good question: Is there a Christian way of hoping? Here is some food for thought from Nocent:

“Péguy, in one of his brilliant theological intuitions, saw hope as a little girl who goes off to school between her two big sisters, faith and love, holding each by the hand. He explains his meaning in his La porche de la deuxième vertu: In the eyes of those who see the three sisters passing, little hope is being guided by the other two; in fact, however, little hope is pulling forward the two who seem to be leading her...for the believer, his personal hope is inseparably connected with the hope of the entire Church and when united to the hope of the Church, it is oriented in two directions: toward Christ and toward the renewal of the world.

Christ? We await during Advent the actualization of his incarnation and then we celebrate Christmas, but we still hope and wait for his second coming. This is a hope that the non-believer cannot share, for it is contrary to what hope should normally be. This Christian hope is indeed a strange thing...why? Because the Christian hopes for what he already possesses! In the inscription of Pectorius we read: “(You hold) the Fish in your hand.”...Christian hope is thus compounded of certainty: that is, we hope for what we already possess. The powerful dynamism that inspires this hope of a reality we already possess and grasp, though we do not see it, is an intense light for faith and a joyful spur to love.”